More on the Sincerity of the Right

Digby again, on the religious right. He makes some points here that tie into more of my thinking on the religious right and my own reaction to them.

As for the Reverend Latham's joining the burgeoning ranks of religious right closet cases, that's something else entirely. When you see this kind of cruel hypocricy on the part of Elmer Gantry after Elmer Gantry, it's not hard to see why some of the non religious might just think all this righteousness is a con that is not worthy of the kind of special respect and deference for religion that our society seems to require. . . .

When you look at the big picture you see that the religious are as politically varied as the population as a whole and that Democrats are as religious as are the Republicans. But the culture war is being waged by churches, if not all churches, and day after day these sexual scolds and allegedly traditionalist leaders are being exposed as frauds after years of self-righteous finger-pointing at anyone who doesn't toe their line. It results in real damage to real people.

The morality of the hucksters of the religious right has been almost entirely focused on other people's sex lives -- homosexuailty, abortion, contraception. They seem to have lost sight of the prohibitions against lying ("Thou shall not bear false witness"), deception (Satan, after all, is the Great Deceiver), separation of Church and State ("Render unto Caesar. . . ."), and the Christian mandate to succor the needy and defend the helpless.

Take this statement by Dan Riehl, as quoted by TBogg:

Sad that a political party is willing to gamble its future on a loss by the US military, but not really surprising, given said party has been more interested in treason than national defense for almost two years.

What kind of moral stance would lead someone to make a completely unfounded and untrue statement like that? Riehl holds himself up as some kind of "conservative," (I just spent some time going through Riehl's blog. Why do people pay attention to crap like this? I wasn't impressed.) But, back to the main issue: It appears very much as though the right doesn't see a statement like Riehl's as immoral. I do. Very much so. (Riehl's comment is only an example of the kind of thing we've been getting regularly from O'Reilly, Malkin, Coulter, the Circle Jerk in the Corner, and other "conservatives." Makes me wonder.)

Back to Digby:, quoting from this article:

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

Where are James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Donald Wildmon, The Falbinson Twins, the Men at Concerned Women for America -- where are they? Where are the news conferences and the OpEds? Where are the statements decrying the growing poverty in America and their own part in creating it? Where are the strongly worded press releases condemning the departure from Jesus' teachings and promising repentance?

Oh, right. . . .

When they spend as much money fighting poverty as they do fighting gay rights, then I might start to believe they are sincere.